DAy 107 - 109 - On the mend

Physio on Tuesday turned out to be a major turning point in my knee problem and my attitude towards he injury and getting better.

It turns out that when I stand naturally my left foot turns slightly to the left and is not straight and this turning out problem increases when I've been doing the effort sessions at the club and has caused the knee pain. Apparently lots of the quads, ligaments and tendons all attach just below the knee join on the inside of your knee. There is also a small 'pad' called a bursar there as well. If I have understood this correctly due to my increased speed on efforts which causes my foot to stick out has caused a twist in my shin bones which is causing a pulling of the muscles, tendons, ligaments etc away from where they are attached on the inside of my knee. Now this is not a problem but the problem arises from me not stretching out these muscles properly and therefore they have been getting tighter and tighter and tighter, hence the pain every step, every hour, every minute in my leg for the last 2 weeks. So once CJ (the physio) worked her magic in some key, and very painful, places the muscles began to relax and within the hour I was walking pain free for the first time in 15 days!

Since then I have been concentrating on keeping my foot aligned and and gently exercising the knee. On Wednesday I went swimming and even managed to have a good run in the pool. It is not deep enough to do proper vertical aqua running so I had my feet on the floor and pushed and slid my feet backwards. Running lengths of those soon got the lungs gasping for air and the heart pumping.

Today, Thursday, I was going to turbo but didn't instead I took the opportunity to fix my puncture and clean the bike ready for an early start on Saturday to get out there for 3 hours.

Tomorrow I'm going to swim straight after school and run even more lengths for trying tentatively to run on soft ground on Sunday.

So all in all a good positive approach. I'll just keep telling myself that this lay off has done me good and not bad. Time to pick it up again next week though and then keep it going till the end.